Xbox Indie Games: Pixel Whirled

I recently exchanged some e-mails with Adam "Holmfry" Holmes, an Xbox Indie Games and flash developer who made the game Pixel Whirled!

You can find Pixel Whirled on Xbox Indie Games for $3 (240 MS Points)

It's fun! It was well worth $3 to me to feel like a kid again, playing a retro style game with all the fun colors and environments you'd find in Mappy Land or Super Mario Bros. It's not deep or complex, but it's fun and it's $3.

Here's a cute release video for the game, so you can see how it plays:



Adam was apparently a big fan of the Transformers Battle for the AllSpark, a feature in Vicarious Visions' Transformers DS games that I helped design and coordinate: essentially a global battle between all players who bought the Autobots or Decepticons versions of the game. So it was funny thinking about that old project, and what we're both doing now: indie game development!

I'm always surprised that Zombie Puncher, the game I've spent months on, earns about half as much in ad revenue as my hit game: Frustrating Tic Tac Toe. Adam's in a similar position: his simple Xbox Indie Game, Ocean Scenes, sells better than Pixel Whirled!

Support indie development, and stay tuned for more from Adam 'Holmfry' Holmes, and Holmade Games!

Pretentious Art Games

A few weeks ago, I made a post about releasing a masterpiece.

If you create a game that's art, how should you release it?

• Paid Model: support the artist, but how do you sell an art game?
• Ad Support: wider audience, but with 'Meesta Pizza' on the 'Mona Lisa'

The 'masterpiece' I was referring to was DOTNUKE, my first art game, one I'm very proud of. You can see, I opted to release the game with ad support.

I really respect Jason Rohrer, best known for his game Passage, but I think what Rohrer does is he takes tried and true game mechanics of tedium, frustration, and loss (among others) to evoke a 'not fun' experience. He does this very well.

So I always tell myself, I could make a game that's art, with a message, that's ALSO fun! I think I succeeded with DOTNUKE, my first real attempt at an art game. It's like Rohrer's work in that it's a five-minute, pixelated experience: but my game is actually fun to play, it's fun to discover the point of the game, and the twist I included in the end.

In the past week, I stumbled on what's apparently a heated topic among game journalists right now: pretentious art games!

• Destructoid calls out art games for being vague and 'not fun'
• David Jaffe (God of War) agrees
• Mega64 releases a hilariously pretentious GDC commercial
• Gamasutra analyzes the 'art game' conversation

...and finally, today Destructoid responds with a pretentious video of their own:



I personally find this whole conversation to be hilarious, and don't expect DOTNUKE to be taken seriously in the crossfire. But I DO hope people discover and enjoy my game!

...I would bet that that's the real goal of most indie art game developers.

DOTNUKE iPhone

My fourth app is now available (for free) on the iPhone App Store!
Download DOTNUKE



DOTNUKE is an addictive, zen-like, experimental art game!

• How do you play?
• What is the goal?
• What does it mean to you?

DOTNUKE is available now (for free) for iPhone and iPod Touch!

First $1000

Kenny's Apps, LLC has reached a financial milestone: its first $1000 earned!
...entirely from ad revenue, pennies per click!

Key Dates:
8/31/09 - Frustrating Tic Tac Toe is released
9/18/09 - Number Guesser Deluxe is released
9/27/09 - Frustrating Tic Tac Toe 1.1 Update
12/15/09 - Zombie Puncher is released
12/25/09 - Christmas
12/28/09 - Number Guesser Deluxe 2.0 Update
1/15/10 - Zombie Puncher 1.1 Update

The nodes on this chart represent weekly earnings.
When I first started, I was making about $1 per day, or $7 per week.
Now my earnings hover around $8 per day, or $56 per week.

How much of these earnings are from each game? Let's take a look!
Keep in mind that the y-scale (earnings) is different on each graph:

Frustrating Tic Tac Toe is still my biggest earner:

Number Guesser Deluxe is still my weakest earner:

  

Zombie Puncher is doing quite well:

 

Keep in mind that Zombie Puncher has only been available since December!

You can see an overall trend that, regardless of app popularity, my revenue is consistent with number of downloads. As more people discover Number Guesser Deluxe, my overall revenue increases for that app. Around Christmas, I saw a generous boost in downloads and ad revenue from ALL of my apps!

Of course to some degree, people are getting bored as others are discovering my apps for the first time. But you would expect to see a bigger boost and decline following any of my app releases, since my apps include in-app referrals to all of my other apps.

When an app is in the New Release queue, you would see more downloads across the board, certainly. Afterward, you would see fewer downloads. Shouldn't ad revenue also decline? This doesn't seem to be the case, which is an indication that early adopters continue to enjoy my apps today.

Speaking of downloads, what are the numbers?

Frustrating Tic Tac Toe: 85959 Downloads
Number Guesser Deluxe: 9138 Downloads
Zombie Puncher: 62745 Downloads

And here's a fun statistic for you. As you may know, Apple only asks people to review an app when they delete it. This leads to generally negative reviews and low star ratings even for popular apps. Of the thousands of downloads above, how many people have reviewed my apps?

Frustrating Tic Tac Toe: 1307 Reviews
Number Guesser Deluxe: 167 Reviews
Zombie Puncher: 1593 Reviews

Some of these reviews are positive, from people who really loved my games and took the time to give me feedback. That still leaves an overwhelming number of players who did NOT delete my apps; I seem to have a very good attach rate for all of my games!

I hope you enjoyed the graphs! My goal is still to earn closer to $100+ in a single day. After taxes and business expenses (about 20% of my earnings), this would amount to roughly a $30k salary, enough to live off of!

More and more, this is beginning to look like a real possibility :)

Stubble Cafe

There are a few things my friends have been up to lately that I've been meaning to post about. Things definitely worth checking out!

First off, remember Jorge?

He's been hard at work making comics in his free time, and his latest are too funny. Jorge came up with this character Stubble Bunny a few years ago, an adorable bunny with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Since then, he's created a whole slew of other Stubble characters and scenarios!

Each of Jorge's stories make me laugh; they play out like random typical conversations or coming of age decisions faced for the first time by characters who are 'cool' beyond their years... at least in their own heads!

All of Jorge's Stubble Comics to date can be read at the Stubble Cafe, a section of Jorge's blog dedicated to stubble. Enjoy!

Zombie Punch!

My brother showed me this video when I first told him about Zombie Puncher:



Andy Samberg would definitely survive the zombie apocalypse!